Best Sex Writing 2012

by Rachel Bussel

  Despite Ross’s efforts, I have nagging questions that keep me from achieving my desired beatific state:

  When will we stop allowing religious doctrine and its zealots from determining public policy on sexual health?

  How long will these same people remain the arbiters of taste and convention in sexual relations?

  Last I checked, George “God-Is-Speaking-Thru-Me” Bush is no longer the POTUS. The Christian religious right is not remotely the majority in this country. Why do we listen to them, over and over again, on the front pages of our country’s most prestigious newspapers, preaching what’s best for men, women, and children?

  It’s such a bummer. The perps who write these stories and lead these campaigns always seem to get revealed as disgusting closeted perverts. And I don’t mean that in a happy way. How many more humiliations in the public square, starring avowedly chaste evangelicals, do we have to endure? It was bad enough reading about Ross’s nausea at female flesh in college—I don’t want to read the next chapter!

  I’d like to see an atheist’s op-ed on sex in the NYT, or even one from a recovering Catholic. I’d be happy, very happy to do it myself. Here’s what I’d say:

  Our cute little species desires both sexual familiarity and sexual variety. That’s why we are so rarely monogamous over a lifetime, although we often enjoy its benefits for episodic periods. When unencumbered by religious shame, we feel perfectly fine about “having it all.”

  I’ll use myself as an example! Je ne regrette rien. May I take a moment to thank all the lovers I’ve ever had for everything I learned from you? You-all are the best, and it makes my heart just want to burst with—oh, you know.

  When young adults, past puberty, remain sexually inexperienced with their peers, it is because of dysfunction, not virtue. Something is wrong, and it’s not happy. Sexual self-knowledge is a huge part—perhaps the biggest part—of growing up. Like taking your first steps, or speaking your first words, you gain enormous intelligence and independence every time you figure out another piece. You fall down and cry sometimes, but you can’t wait to get back up. To learn that things are not black and white, to hold contradictions, ambiguity, and empathy in your body and mind at the same time: that’s sexual maturity. You don’t achieve it from cutting out paper dolls and keeping your knees crossed.

  Fun clue: Men are sensitive creatures. They like to feel safe and adored, just like, you know—everyone else. Sometimes they don’t always know what to do and don’t feel like having the answer to everything.

  And women? They can be total thrill-seekers; when they get sex on the brain, they’ll get off with their fingers or their pet bunny or whatever else is around. They have brilliant ideas and can march into the battlefield with a double-sided ax.

  It’s dangerously stupid to talk about men and women as if they were different animals—when we have so much more in common, in our capacities, than we have differences. Hasn’t everyone been a lot happier now that we no longer live our lives based on superstition? Why, at this point, do we ignore primary evidence—at our peril—and cling to shaming, stunted fairy tales?

  I had a dream about Ross. He was eating an apple and he was happy. His mom got better and she didn’t need him to take care of her anymore; she was happy, too. Men and women gathered around Ross and started kissing him. Tears ran down his cheeks. He was scared that everyone would find out, but the sexy happy people said, “No, Ross, it’s okay, you’re not crazy. You can have this, but you have to be honest about it, ’cause that’s only fair.”

  And then Ross took a big giant bite.

  Losing the Meatpacking District: A Queer History of Leather Culture

  Abby Tallmer

  The recent history of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District is a story about the homogenization of our city and the erasure of a generation of its people and their history. It is a story of how the intersecting forces of rising real estate prices, the Disneyfication of Times Square and Manhattan at large, the conservative national shift over the past two decades, and the onset of AIDS and the panic surrounding it have effectively eclipsed memories of a time when “Meatpacking District” was not a real-estate term.

  Instead, the term was ironic shorthand for the patch of West Village blocks, centered roughly at 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, to which countless visitors flocked, seeking the alternative sexual universe that existed there before the invasion of slumming heterosexual tourists looking for Stella McCartney’s latest couture designs.

  At the height of the feminist, gay, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 70s through the mid-80s, the Meatpacking District was home to the city’s thriving and mostly queer SM and sex club scene.

  Far from being a desirable destination, the Far West Village, as it was known back then, was unknown territory to most New Yorkers except for butchers, neighborhood residents, and the select group of queer and kinky people who roamed the streets and filled the clubs there in the late-night hours, staggering home in the early morning as the sun was rising and most others were heading off to work. During the day, strong men dragged animal carcasses through the garbage-filled streets. It was an area reserved for those with iron stomachs, given the stench of dead flesh and rotting trash that permeated the air.

  Growing up in the neighborhood, I was ashamed to invite my grade-school friends over for fear they would think I lived in a garbage dump. But at night, the place came alive and the unlit, otherwise desolate streets were filled with other men, also tough-looking, but clad in leather chaps and motorcycle jackets, with hankies protruding from their rear pockets and keys dangling from their sides. They lingered on street corners, purposefully eyeing one another, striking up conversations, offering each other a light, and often disappearing down mysterious alleyways or spilling through unmarked but much-trafficked doorways.

  There were other characters as well—adventurous male/female couples; groups of nervous young gay men and women clearly new to the area and intent on a mission, often clad not in leather/fetish gear but in regular clothes; and the ever-present trans hookers, who were mostly black or Hispanic. Many of the hookers almost completely passed as women, as stunning as they were scantily dressed. They could often be seen awkwardly climbing into and out of the limos and trucks driven by the married men from Staten Island or New Jersey who traveled there just for them.

  In the early 1970s, I lived five blocks north of Christopher Street and three blocks from the Hudson River. I was then about nine years old, a queer kid waiting for the right time to spring this news on my parents. I was raised in a very permissive household and often walked the streets alone even after dark. Needless to say, the night action in my neighborhood hardly went unnoticed by me and, in fact, served as the object of much curiosity.

  I remember riding my bike around the neighborhood, making special trips past the piers and the bathhouses and through the deserted side streets west of Greenwich Street, and down 14th Street and the short blocks just below. Though I wasn’t quite sure what exactly went on behind these hidden, locked doors, I knew somehow—God knows how—that whatever it was had to do with being gay, with being sexual, with a particular form of gay sexual expression that I gathered was in some way shameful. The very same men who cheerily said hi to me in my building’s elevator usually looked more horrified than happy to see me when I greeted them from my bicycle as they loitered, regaled in leather, in alleyways or in front of dimly lit clubs or bathhouses.

  As I would learn later, the unofficial center of all of this action was the “Triangle Building” on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, which now houses Vento, a popular Italian restaurant opened in 2004, but was then the site of some of the most notorious leather bars in the city. Entrances to a stunning array of SM and sex clubs and backrooms lined both the Eighth and the Ninth Avenue sides of the Triangle. Those directly on the Triangle included the nationally known Hellfire Club, the Vault, J’s, The Man Hole, and many others.

  Queer clubs within strolling distance included the notori
ous Mineshaft, the Anvil, the Asstrick, the Cellblock, the International Stud, the Glory Hole, and, later, the Lure. Patrons migrated between them all night long, every night of the week, back when sexual freedom defined an era.

  Nearly all of these clubs, except the Hellfire Club and the Vault, were predominantly gay, though a few stray women could be spotted here and there in some of the less strict men’s clubs. The Mineshaft’s door policy, however, was notoriously strict, and many gay men were turned away each night for violating its strict leather/macho dress code. That didn’t keep some inventive women from testing whether it was foolproof.

  I know this to be true firsthand, for one night just after I turned 18, my best friends, Saul and Brian, decided that it would be fun to dress me up and sneak me into the Mineshaft with them. As I am rather the femme type of lesbian, I was terrified about passing the rigid door inspection, but the boys picked out my outfit—white T-shirt, black leather jacket, jeans, and boots, with a sock in my pants prominently displaying package—and did my hair expertly; they even gave me a fake five o’clock shadow. I remember shuffling in line behind Brian and ahead of Saul—I pleaded to be last, but Brian said this would look suspicious—and I vividly remember trying not to stare at the floor too obviously as the doorman inspected my ID. After what seemed like forever but was undoubtedly a matter of seconds, the doorman muttered, “Next” and that was it. I was in. But poor Saul, who stood behind me in line, was barred at the door because there was something “too effeminate” about him.

  Inside, I remember seeing a sea of nude, half-nude, harnessed and chained male bodies (the bottoms) and muscular men in full leather (the tops) in groups of three, or four, or two, or eight, or more. Some of the tops held whips and paddles of various sorts, and many were noisily using them on their willing victims.

  I remember all sorts of sounds: from the bottoms, cries and whimpers and gasps and moans and shrill but insincere pleas of “Stop!,” tops barking orders at their slaves sternly or angrily or calmly, while others yelled numbers for their subjects to repeat, or let out long strings of outrageously profane, usually effemi-nizing, epithets, or simply emitted guttural, primal groans. All the collective words and sighs were punctuated by the unmistakable sounds of flagellation—wooden paddles striking flesh, the snapping of bullwhips slicing through the air and landing sharply on human targets, the ringing of bare hands making contact with buttocks. I stood there transfixed, thinking, This is what men do when women aren’t around.

  I was sure from the moment I entered that I wouldn’t be able to stay long before being found out, so I was determined to take it all in. But my secret was never discovered. After a half hour we reluctantly left to rejoin Saul.

  This adventure took place a full year or two before I discovered the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM), New York’s first and only lesbian SM organization, founded in 1981. I came upon the group just as I was growing convinced that no network existed for women who were interested in exploring SM with other women.

  Which brings us back to the Mineshaft. The immediate and intense exhilaration I felt upon getting past the guard and into the main play area came from the liberating realization that not one of the men in that room cared about me—the real me, not the sock-down-my-pants me. I’m sure the overpowering smell of God knows how many bottles of poppers had something to do with this feeling, too.

  Even as a woman, I experienced the Mineshaft as my first purely queer sexual space. The club imparted a feeling of immense optimism, opportunity, safety, and community. If you were gay and in the Mineshaft or any of the other queer SM clubs in the Meatpacking District in the 1970s, 80s, and into the early 90s, you felt, often for the first time in your life, completely removed, divorced, immune from socially imposed heterosexual judgment.

  Fortunately, a few years later I was able to capture a similar feeling in a purely lesbian sexual space when LSM co-founder Jo A. began hosting Ms. Trick, a series of women-only SM nights at the otherwise gay male Asstrick Club.

  These queer SM clubs gave us a place to feel that we were no longer outsiders—or rather, they made us feel that it was better to be outsiders, together, than to force ourselves to be like everybody else. This was long before our self-appointed gay leaders began telling us that getting married was every queer person’s highest goal—though certainly then, as now, there were many extralegal long-term gay couples happily living together.

  Back then, many of us believed that gay liberation was rooted in sexual liberation, and we believed that liberation was rooted in the right—no, the need—to claim ownership of our bodies, to experience and celebrate sexuality in as many forms as possible, limited only by our time and imagination. We believed that gay pride was impossible without sexual pride, including leather pride. Though we did not know it then, in the Meatpacking District of the 1970s through the early 90s, we were living in one of the most permissive times in modern history and in one of the most permissive places in modern history.

  Today, when I try to explain this history to younger queers, they often don’t believe me. The Meatpacking District during that period has attained an almost mythological status for younger members of the LGBT community that makes it impossible for them to believe the concrete reality many of us took for granted back then. We were kids then, in terms of our experience and the sense of possibility we felt. We fully expected that being gay would only get better and easier as we got older. Ours was the first generation to celebrate and experience our sexuality in all its alternative forms—and that we did as much as possible. Most of us never foresaw a more restrictive world and never imagined that our joyful experiment would end. Little did we know that many of us would never live to adulthood, that this moment would be gone in a flash, and that an era would vanish with it.

  Never take your present for granted, because there’s no telling how quickly and how thoroughly it will be erased.

  Penis Gagging, BDSM, and Rape Fantasy: The Truth About Kinky Sexting

  Rachel Kramer Bussel

  “You don’t want to gag a woman with your penis unless you have some serious issues with the way you see women.” So says Kirsten Powers, ex-girlfriend of sex-scandal star Congressman Anthony Weiner, in a piece for The Daily Beast. She is referencing his sexting relationship with a Las Vegas blackjack dealer, which made national headlines. The transcript of their texts was posted by Radar Online, including one bit that prompted Powers’s musing: “You will gag on me before you c** with me in you” and “[I’m] thinking about gagging your hot mouth with my c***.”

  This article is not about Weiner. I’m pretty much over political sex scandals and inclined to think that someone like Weiner wants to get caught, consciously or unconsciously. The only positive thing I can say about such scandals is that they do help shed light on just how unenlightened we are about topics like monogamy and BDSM. Powers is an example of a woman making a blanket statement about something she clearly doesn’t know the first thing about, simply because it offends her.

  You know the phrase “Taken out of context, I must seem so strange?” That goes double for pulling random bits of erotic conversation, texted or otherwise, and analyzing them as if they told a whole story. Without the motivation of the person sending and receiving them, you really don’t know anything, and yet a default anti-BDSM reaction seems to be acceptable. Our public squeamishness over the fact that some people can eroticize pain, degradation, and being ordered around, safely, consensually, and pleasurably, is nothing more than a prejudice that needs to be eradicated.

  For instance, I had an extended kinky relationship with someone where the bulk of our exchanges occurred via email, phone calls, and texting; only a minority of our interactions were in person. We had built up plenty of previous knowledge about each other when he texted me, “I want to rape you.” Now, of course, if someone had grabbed my phone at that very moment and that was all they saw, they might think this person was violent. But there is a world of difference between discussing a rape fantasy and actu
al rape; a person saying they want to gag another person (or be gagged) would, in a consensual case, mean that both parties are mutually interested in the exchange. I knew exactly what he meant, and he knew that I knew—and that I thought it was hot. That’s not something I’d take lightly, and I’ll admit that even though we’d been talking about that very thing, using the words force and make were easier for me than using the word rape. The truth is, we went farther in some ways than I ever have with a lover precisely because I trusted him so much, and because our fantasies aligned so perfectly, feeding off each other.

  I’m aware that from afar it might be hard to tell the difference when all you have is someone’s words, stark and disconnected—which is why I wouldn’t presume to jump in and tell someone else how to behave, or how to fantasize. I can tell you that when I read Powers’s words, I felt slut-shamed, because I’ve had exchanges just as risqué, just as perverted (and I use that word proudly). The art of verbal degradation is a fine one, and it’s not for the fainthearted or those who have poor social skills or misogynists or those who simply want to spout out their fantasy without acknowledging the other person.

  Another lover, with whom I’d engaged in rough sex, straight-out asked me how far was too far, what names I liked to be called, thereby both establishing some boundaries and, in my opinion, making for some hot foreplay. Far from detracting from a dominant’s power, checking in, as well as making a submissive acknowledge exactly what it is that floats their boat, can be very hot.

  Again, I am not talking about nonconsensual exchanges. But I think it’s important for those of us who are kinky, or who have engaged in kinky play, to stand up for our right to do so. That doesn’t mean you have to post the highly personal details of your exchanges online, and I wouldn’t recommend running for office and leaving a paper trail of things you wouldn’t want your constituents to know, but it does mean speaking up for yourself and not letting ignorance rule. It also means checking our own inner censors and making sure we don’t turn around and make unwarranted judgments about other people’s sex lives, especially where we don’t have all the facts.